Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Fayetteville: The Social Engineering Bike-a-thon

Requiring every new business (no matter what sort of business it is) to have more bike racks is a thrilling idea.

As much as we may like and admire them as individuals in the the current city administration, it mustn’t be forgotten that this is also the administration that not only managed to let the decades old Coca-Cola sign on the Square (which many people would bring others to see) be painted over, but has also turned Block Street into an old-fashioned English Gothic Folly.

Comrade Jeremy Pate, Fayetteville’s development services director, is quoted in the Northwest Arkansas Times today as saying that the proposal is based on recommendations from the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals.

I don’t drive a car, and believe that more folks should use public transportation and bicycles when practical.

But a proposal like this?

Basing local legislation on the ideas of folks who don’t actually live here, without doing an exhaustive study of how the bike racks in Fayetteville are actually used is straight out of Plato’s Cloud Cookoo Land.

We do need more bike racks outside of apartment buildings, factories and certain businesses.

But all businesses?

Scott Berna, who put a bike rack in front of his business in 2003, says that no one has used it in the nine years since it as erected. Well, no one that anyone can see, anyway. It is a funeral home, after all . . .

It would be insulting to the people of Fayetteville if the City Council were to just pass this feel-good measure without more study, and actually talk to the folks involved.

Some existing businesses need more bike racks, and some - existing or new - will never need any more than the already required number.

But for crying out loud, talk to the people this touches in Fayetteville before you vote.

******Do you guys actually know what a president does?

Watching the crowds hoop and holler every time one of the GOP candidates says that on “Day One” they will repeal the dreaded Obamacare, and a whole host of other actions, it leads one to wonder:

Do these folks actually know what presidents can and cannot do? Are they hoping for a dictator?

The candidates know, and shame on them for playing to the ignorance of the crowds.

In recent days, the Great Humanitarians of Facebook have been debating (well, not debating so much as agreeing) that there are people in the world who are not human, but animals.

Like T.S. Eliot’s cats, many dogs also have a secret name. Oh, not all dogs, mind you, - but certainly the ones who are poets at heart, have the soul of of an adventurer, and are ever alert to the first sign of danger to to their realm, and those they feel feel called upon to defend.